News

Our group had the pleasure of attending a Winter School in the Austrian Alps, organized by the students and postdocs of the Department of Sustainable and Bio-inspired Materials of our institute, Nico Brun's group at TU Darmstadt, and Ulli Steiner's group at the Adolphe Merkle Institute. Matti A., Sakshi B., Matti B., Rafa K., Tsu-Wang S. and Clemens S. from our group actively contributed to the program. The school offered a fantastic opportunity to step outside our usual focus on membranes and vesicles and engage with topics in sustainable and responsive materials design, soft matter under confinement, and AI. Inspiring…

Work from our group was presented at the EBSA July 2025 congress in Rome by Matilde Accorsi (Matti A.), Matilde Becheroni (Matti B.) and Elias Sabri. The work of Matti A. was selected for an oral presentation and her talk on "Sprouting vesicles and far-reaching nanotubes: a journey to lipid networks" impressed the audience. Matti B. presented results with her poster on "Light-responsive asymmetric membranes" and Elias presented a poster on "Combining spectroscopy techniques and pulsed electric fields to characterize the material properties of biomolecular condensates", which covered work from his new preprint. Matti A providing analogies to Italian pizza…

March 14, 2025 After three and a half incredibly productive years with us, Agustín (Agu) Mangiarotti is moving on to new adventures. During his time here, he published several high-impact papers, introduced innovative techniques, and brought fresh perspectives to the lab. Beyond his scientific contributions, Agu was a great colleague - always engaging and ready to laugh at funny and not-so-funny jokes. We’ll miss you, Agu, and wish you all the best in your next chapter! Last pizza orgy with Agu Smiling in Golm Agu's articles Lipid packing and cholesterol content regulate membrane wetting and remodeling by biomolecular condensates, A.…

February 18, 2025 Dominik's paper of on asymmetric membranes containing phosphatidic acid (and all the troubles we had with preparing and characterizing them) was selected as one of the top 5 best papers of the Biophysical Journal for 2024. The paper was presented at the Best of Biophysical Journal Symposium at the Annual Biophysical Society Meeting in Los Angeles, February 2025. Effect of leaflet asymmetry on the stretching elasticity of lipid bilayers with phosphatidic acid, D, Drabik, P. Hinc, M. Stephan, R.R.M. Cavalcanti, A. Czogalla and R. Dimova, Biophys. J. 123, 2406 (2024)DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2024.05.031 Full text The article was discussed as New…

November 22, 2024 Nicky impressed the thesis defense committee. Way to go Nicky! Thesis title: Jellied vesicles: probing the interactions between vesicles and the extracellular matrix environment Crowning Nicky Balancing the weight of the PhD With a well-deserved PhD-related gelatin present Nicky's articles Extracellular Vesicle Mobility in Collagen I Hydrogels Is Influenced by Matrix-Binding Integrins, N.W. Tam, A. Becker, A. Mangiarotti, A. Cipitria, R. Dimova, ACS Nano 18, 29585–29601 (2024)DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.4c07186 Non-specific membrane-matrix interactions influence diffusivity of lipid vesicles in hydrogel environments, N. Tam, O. Schullian, A. Cipitria and R. Dimova, Biophys. J. 123, 638-650 (2024)DOI: 10.1016/j.bpj.2024.02.005 Biomolecular condensates modulate membrane lipid packing and…

November 6, 2024 Congratulations to Mina! Well deserved for all the hard work Thesis title: Photomanipulation of membrane properties, shape and transport Mina’s Articles: Photoswitchable endocytosis of biomolecular condensates in giant vesicles, A. Mangiarotti, M. Aleksanyan, M. Siri, R. Lipowsky and R. Dimova, Adv. Sci. 11, 2309864 (2024)DOI: 10.1002/advs.202309864 Photomanipulation of minimal synthetic cells: area increase, softening, and interleaflet coupling of membrane models doped with azobenzene-lipid photoswitches, M. Aleksanyan, A. Grafmüller, F. Crea, V.N. Georgiev, N. Yandrapalli, S. Block, J. Heberle and R. Dimova, Adv. Sci. 10, 2304336 (2023) DOI: 10.1002/advs.202304336 Kinetic relaxation of giant vesicles validates diffusional softening in a binary lipid mixture, K. Sapp,…

ComeInCell is a European Doctoral Network coordinated by Rumiana Dimova. Our mission is to develop advanced cellular mimics that integrate functional membrane structures and biomolecular condensates. The network is funded by the EU for 4 years (2024-2028). For more information, read the MPICI Press Release.